Missing meshes appear as yellow squares with a giant exclamation mark. The official patch version 1.2 (included with Shivering Isles) introduced a ‘fix’ that replaces missing meshes by these giant yellow markers instead of just ignoring them.
Read below for instructions on how to fix missing meshes.
First, make sure your mod is correctly installed and that the new meshes and textures are correctly registered with the game.
You have basically two major options :
Either install Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM) and follow instructions to update bsa archives to register the new meshes and textures…
Or, install ArchiveInvalidation Invalidated ! to have new textures and meshes registered automatically when you install new mods.
Also… make sure you have all meshes and textures correctly installed ( textures/ and meshes/ folders have to go in Data… sometimes, they are included in a subfolder in the zip file).
Some mods require to be installed in multiple packages. Make sure you have downloaded and installed all the required files. For example, if you have installed OOO 1.32, you need to install version 1.31 first as 1.32 is an upgrade.
If it still doesn’t work, there may be a problem with the mod. To fix this you have to :
1- Find out which mod is causing it (the hard part). Depending of the location of the missing meshes, it can be difficult to guess which mod introduced it. You may have to disable mods one by one until you find the culprit.
2- Download it again. Reinstall it and use OBMM to register the changed meshes / textures (If you are using Archive Invalidation Invalidated !, you can skip this step and go to #3)
3- If the above doesn’t work, open the Construction Set with only that mod activated
4- Go to the location where you noticed the missing meshes
To help with the location, look in the Mods Forum FAQ for instructions on how to activate Beta Comments and how to use them in the console. The location is usually included in the beta comment you will get with the missing mesh.
5- Open the item with missing mesh in CS and look at the path and name of the mesh it is looking for. If it is really missing a mesh, CS will give you an error message when you open the location at step 4. The name of the missing mesh is included in the error message.
6- Look in the installation package of the mod… one of many things can cause this :
– If the mesh is there but with a different name, just rename it to what the mod is expecting.
– If the mesh is missing from the package, you will have to either contact the author of the mod for an update or find your own replacement in the meshes included with Oblivion. To do that, use the BSA Archive Browser from OBMM, identify a mesh that looks promising and extract it to the folder your mod is expecting (and rename it to the name the mod is expecting as well).
7- Once you have replaced the missing mesh, run OBMM to register the change in the bsa files if necessary (or not, if you are using Archive Invalidation Invalidated!).
It take a few trials and errors to get this working but I could fix a few missing meshes that way.
If all of the above fails, you always have the last resort solution of just entering the console, clicking on the yellow square and typing ‘disable’. The change will be preserved in your next saved game.